#11 as good as we said
1. Broken shoes
The day I turn 29, I walk onto a studio lot and my sandal breaks in half. It’s an old shoe, bought in Marylebone just days after I graduated college.
I want to replace it, but it’s the fourth of the month and I haven’t been paid yet so I stop and take a photo of the thinnest strap, the one that broke in half.
2. Casual
I lay in bed and I can hear myself saying it. Mouth to tit. Hand to back. Fingers between my legs. I worry these boys look at me as a puzzle of places to fill, their hands and tongues and cocks observing each section of my body as a different option.
Maybe there, or no, I’ll try there. And then their faces get angry and I get weak, and they are so angry, and I get smaller.
And this is what we like. I guess.
3. Erewhon
It’s a Friday night, and my mom is coming over. Or, according to Find My Friends, she is already over.
I’m in the elevator at the fancy grocery store and this little girl is twirling and singing to herself and the doors close and I gasp. No, I scream. She looks up at me, and twirls, again, into the elevator. I apologise to her father, I’m sorry I reacted so loudly, it’s just your daughter, she was twirling and she didn’t see.
4. More
I wonder if any of the other assistants can tell I’m limping.
5. Capitalism
It’s this all the time. Want more, but be grateful for what you have. Don’t settle, but play the game. Understand the game is flawed, but don’t try to cut corners. Be happy with less, but go out and get more. But wait. Know your place.
I don’t know how to exist between wanting more and accepting less and wanting less but expecting more.
6. Saturday night
I meet up with a girlfriend at a tapas bar on Sunset. We order a salad to share, and she tells me about a girl she knows whose father had sex with her little sister's best friend.
She tells me who the father is, and then I tell her that I know him.
7. Edits
You need to capitalise Dad.
I read Romil’s note again.
Capitalize Dad.
I take a screenshot and send it back to him and then we laugh.
8. Cards
Moses comes over after dinner because he wants me to do his tarot reading. I tell him that he needs to let go of fear, and then I tell him about the father. He listens and says that anytime anything happens to me, I always think it’s a big deal when it’s really only a big deal to me. I try to kiss Moses, but then I remember we don’t do that anymore, and if we did, one of us might get sick, and it’d probably be me.
I lay my head on his chest instead.
9. Comedy friends
I think I learned this from Amy. She is always laughing about my father. At first I found it disarming but then I began to do it too. We laugh. Not just about my dad, but about her anorexia. We laugh, and we laugh, about how small she got, and how sick we thought, and how all of this happened to kids.
10. Commutes
I leave work early and throw my shoes in the bin.
11. On your own
The great American singer releases her 10th studio album. I lay in bed listening to it for a weekend. Two years ago, I saw the singer dancing—no, twirling—through the Heath. She had a big beanie on and oversized headphones, and I could tell it was her cause her sweatpants were American and her blonde hair was peaking through, and it was her.
My phone buzzes.
U know I care about u very much, right?
12. 11am
I never give up on things.
Correction: I never give up on things I want.
Correction: I never give up on anything. But, him.
Willa texts me and asks what I’m doing.
Nothing, I say.
Just walking.